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Saturday, August 16, 2014

Reposting an old favorite… make your own polymer clay silverware textured beads

Hello again! and welcome back to Tree Wings Studio! Two weeks ago you found me nearly buried beneath a mound of paint-spattered papers… and now today… well, actually I have nothing new to show or write about. Mostly just the same old, same old going on. I've gotten those papers cleared up and now I'm working away at the mound of unpainted beads (I love painting, but for the most part it isn't an exciting thing to watch! lol), organizing beads in my shop and planning the next few weeks of creating.

Part of that next few weeks of creating will hopefully include some new beads and some beads I haven't made in a very long time—almost 2 years ago—my silverware textured beads! The little tutorial below is one I shared back in November 2012 and I thought it would be fun to share it again. These beads are super easy to make and turn out so nice, if I may say so myself. Enjoy…

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I've been on a bead making rampage these days! In between the critter making and the pony sanding, I've been squeezing in a few new ideas. So today I thought I'd share the process of my latest ones with you: silverware textured beads.

I chose three different fancy handled knives for this project. I got these at Goodwill—you never what neat textures you'll find when digging through the silverware bins there!

I used a two part molding compound to make the impressions and for these I kept the sides fairly low since I'm not going to casting beads with them—just texturing.

And here they are all cured. I just love this stuff—it sets up so fast and there's no need for any mold release!

Next I shaped my bead cores in polymer clay, making them a little smaller than I wanted the final beads to be. I baked them in the oven for 15 minutes just to set the clay.

After cooling, I coated each bead with a very small amount of liquid clay and wrapped them in thin sheets of polymer clay.

And then I rolled and pressed each bead into the mold to apply the texture—having the hard core enabled me to get good detail without misshaping the bead.

And here's how they looked after texturing. I baked them for an hour for the final curing and after cooling I gave each bead a wash of acrylic paint to bring out the details.

All finished! There are so many different ways and different textures you could use to make these beads—try it out and have fun!!

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And now I'm off to vacuum my studio (it needs it, bad!) and finish my planning… see you in two weeks!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for reposting this technique. I remember reading the original post and knew it was something I wanted to try. By the time I got around to visiting my local thrift store for silverware patterns .. I'd forgotten where had seen the post. I tried various ways to use the patterns, but never achieved the look I remembered seeing in your pictures. Now I know what I did wrong (the solid core tip). Thanks again